The good and the ugly in the life of a customer care representative

It is two weeks now since a spicy conversation about a customer care representative cropped up on Twitter.

The woman, identified only as Caro and presumed to be an Airtel employee, was the talk of the town for many reasons.

Whereas some users were congratulating her for the courteous manner in which she handles those who ask queries via social media, other posts were outright displays of lust; with men posting all manner of jokes about their admiration for her.

One photo post was the most telling. It was a screenshot of a Twitter direct message conversation between Caro and a certain man on the official Airtel account. The man was asking Caro if she was willing to “test” whether his recently bought duvets could cover two people.

However, one Jamo replied to the text, laughing off the sender as a fisi (hyena, the common term for lustful men) which is perhaps why Jamo was the subject of ridicule as #CaroWaAirtel trended. Many users admonished him for “hijacking” an otherwise promising discussion.

Caro and Jamo are just a drop in the ocean of customer care personnel who, in the course of their work, interact with customers with peculiar requests.

For instance, there are people who have previously called customer care centres to ask for time or to enquire if it is raining in Nairobi.

Lifestyle had a chat with two representatives working with Safaricom, which has one of the busiest call centres in East Africa, and it emerged that contending with insults and dealing with flirtatious customers is but a way of life among that cadre of employees.

“There are those who ask to meet me over beer or tea or coffee,” said Njeri Igane, who has been a customer care agent for six years and who currently responds to queries posted on Safaricom’s social media platforms.

“‘Uko na sauti nzuri (you have a nice voice)’ happens a lot. But we still have to maintain professionalism at the end of the day. So, we let down the customer slowly, calmly,” she added.

And for Hezron Yegon, who has also been handling customers’ queries for six years, the one insult he has learnt to contend with is the remark from some clients that the mobile service provider is out to steal people’s money.

“Even after you explain to them how their money was used, the ending comment is, ‘[Click] Mmeniibia (you have stolen from me)’,” he said.

“That’s a misconception … I don’t think there is any corporate out there whose core business is to steal from people.”

In February, a voice clip emerged in which a man was asking a female customer care representative at Safaricom about the plans she had for Valentine’s Day. The man, who identified himself as Arnold, left the lady asking again and again, “How can I help you?”

At one time he said “I just wanted to greet you” then went on to say “I don’t know what your Valentine’s plans are”.

Listening to the conversation, one can tell that the representative was trying her best not to bash the man, as irritating as he might have sounded. She afforded to wish him a good night and even told him “karibu sana” when he offered to visit the Safaricom offices later that week.

“That temptation to lose your cool is real,” said Yegon.

“And honestly, sometimes you’re like, ‘What’s wrong with this person?’ And sometimes actually you find yourself already losing it. But then you quickly regain it and begin asking this guy if there is anything you can be of help in as far as our products and services are concerned. Because, again, you remember that all our calls are recorded for quality purposes and management purposes.”

Such was the restraint with which the Airtel representative who signs his posts as Jamo handled a Facebook user who wrote: “You are only good at SportPesa. Internet.” Jamo replied: “We appreciate your feedback.”

The one firm that appears not to be bothered by the acerbic comments is Kenya Power. Looking at their Facebook account, they most often ignore customers’ rants, which appear to stream in from every corner of the republic.

NOTHING SERIOUS

Ms Jacquiline Okola, a computerised telephone operator at the Nation Media Group, is among the people who receive Kenyans’ calls on the official contact lines of the media house.

She said that she draws satisfaction from the feedback callers give on the various stories run on the Nation products.

“Someone may say they are happy with what was written, with what he saw on TV, got good advice after reading,” she said, adding that some of the callers may sometimes be prominent personalities.

However, she said, there is a group of callers who are notorious for calling again and again even after being served.

One of them, she noted, is notorious for calling the contact lines then playing pre-recorded messages of a political nature.

“He will talk and talk and talk. You respond, he’s not responding — he can’t hear you,” she said.

“There is another man calling from Garsen. He will tell us, ‘I have been transferred from Garissa; now I’m based in Garsen’, so he is charged with what what … Nothing serious,” said Ms Okola.

According to Ms Lucy Kiruthu, a management consultant and also a columnist on customer care matters, a professional customer care representative has to be prepared for clients of all temperaments.

“Unfortunately, some organisations do not equip their representatives with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required in dealing with customers. On the other hand good and sincere customers do not behave this way,” said Ms Kiruthu.

The representatives who spoke to Lifestyle said that despite the few low moments, they derive joy from knowing that they have helped people overcome the challenges.

“What counts in my bag when I go home is knowing that I’ve helped someone. That’s my biggest motivation,” said Yegon on Thursday. 

“For example this morning I spoke to a grandmother whose line was blocked. I helped her unblock it and she was like, ‘God bless you, my son.’ That gives me the strength to come in another day.”

Ms Igane recalled one moment when she helped a pastor based in the US to reopen his blocked M-Pesa account.

“Once I assisted that person, he spent a good five minutes praying for me. And I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s faced that; it’s a common occurrence. You could actually feel the blessings, all the way from the US,” she said.

Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest telecommunications firm, sees an average of 400,000 calls made to the customer care desk every 24 hours, according to Ms Goldermier Opiyo, who heads the contact centre operations department.

Out of those, she said, around 160,000 select the option of speaking to a customer care agent. With about 700 agents being on stand-by at any given time, she explained, every person receiving calls at the contact centre answers an average of 105 calls during their eight-hour shift.

“After you serve a customer, there is a breather of some 10 seconds then another customer comes,” said Yegon.

The flurry of calls may be mentally taxing but Yegon and Ms Igane said the training they received before starting the job — and the examinations where they had to score more than 90 per cent to proceed — prepared them for the highs and lows of the job.

As such, Ms Igane said, some of the pranks they receive offer the much-needed comic relief.

“It’s actually a source of joy for us; to know that we engage in customers in all levels,” she said in reference to a widely shared joke in which a person wrote to Safaricom that their line had a problem, only to later disclose that it was the clothes line, not their Sim card.

“It sometimes brings a break to the monotony,” she observed.

Other times, Yegon explained, the humour comes from young callers who want to pretend that they are the elderly people who own the IDs with which the line was registered.

“They have registered with their grandmother’s ID number and this is a minor calling. So, in the first instance, they are told, ‘We are sorry; for us to assist, we request the registered owner of the line to call.’ So, having realised that these guys cannot sort me out, they’ll pretend to be the grandmother. And they’ll squeeze their voice: ‘Habari mwanangu (How are you, my child)?’”

On other occasions, the requests are about reversing money used to gamble on betting site SportPesa, a transaction that is currently impossible.

“It happens especially if somebody has bet then lost,” said Ms Igane.

She warned those who call for pranks or those who abuse the customer care agents to think twice before doing so; because with every call that they receive, a record is entered in the service provider’s database.

“We even have very abusive customers. So we write there: ‘Abusive customer’,” she said.

On a normal day, the requests they receive include blocked lines, M-Pesa transaction reversals, complaints on how airtime was deducted among others.

Ms Opiyo, the head of Safaricom’s customer service, explained that about 50 per cent of queries are related to M-Pesa.

Given the traffic that the agents handle, Ms Opiyo explained, the company is pursuing other mediums of addressing customers’ concerns.

“Safaricom is investing in simplified solutions … we’re exploring technology and alternative channels to assist,” she said.

GOtv, a Multichoice subsidiary offering pay TV, has adopted a similar approach to Safaricom’s — responding to users’ queries even when they are posted as a comment on their promotional posts.

Predictably, some of the comments posted on the GOtv comments border on insults. For instance, a user who made a comment on a Friday morning post lambasted the pay TV channel, threatening to buy another from a rival company.

Given the varying temperaments of consumers, Ms Opiyo, who started her job as a customer care agent, admits that it is hard to manage the employees who deal with the public.

“Managing people who do a mundane job is not very easy,” she said, adding that Safaricom had created room for a number of entertainment activities within the building housing the customer care agents so that they can let off steam.

“They have a crèche, there is a gym, and they have events for showcasing their talent. There are times when they actually listen to music on a Friday,” said Ms Opiyo.

An undated study by Britain’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Institute of Customer Service and the Aston Business School, whose summary is available online, shows that in the UK, staff at call centres experience 25 per cent more staff turnover than the average rate, providing a pointer to the arduous tasks they face.

Ms Opiyo said their firm is doing its best to ensure their staff are motivated, which includes creating healthy competition among teams.

“That job is difficult because … I always coin the phrase: They’re the voice of the company to the customer. And also the customer’s voice to the company. You must treat them well but you must be realistic about career ambitions; you must be honest — sometimes honest to the point that you are brutally honest when things are not working right,” she said.

Ms Kiruthu, the management consultant, said the one quality that a person should have before taking up the job of a customer care representative is intelligence.

“The one I consider most important is emotional intelligence so they can manage their own feelings and those of their customers. They also need basic customer service skills and most importantly they need to have the right attitude,” she told Lifestyle.

Mr Yegon has learnt to take everything in his stride, and his main objective when he is from the 7am-4pm shift is to help as many people as he can.

For Mr Igane, the greatest attribute that a person needs in the job is being sociable.

“You have to love people. If you don’t love people, you can’t. Because this is what you’re engaging in; day-in day-out.”

Her message to pranksters is simple: karma can be unforgiving. Today, she says, you may call while drunk, bent on wasting other people’s time…

“Tomorrow you’ll be the one wanting to get to customer care urgently and you can’t because there’s another drunk person on the line,” she notes.